Have you assessed your stressors and your self-care practice?

Have you assessed your stressors and your self-care practice?

(NB I will be writing about self-care in parallel with my posts about Coaching for a few weeks. As Coaches are you role modelling good self-care? If not this will be for you too. Even if you are there will be some ideas you can share with your clients in this thread).

In order to know how you are doing you need to give yourself a baseline. It is time to get real with yourself. Make a list of the stressors (things that stress you) and another list of the things you are doing to take care of yourself.

This will allow you to spot where the gaps in your self-care might be.

When I did this for myself I noticed some interesting little cycles that I kinda knew about but wasn’t being real about.

My weight has been steadily going up since about 2019 for various reasons including other stressors. I then worry about it and comfort eat!

I am going to offer myself as a case study so you can do the same for yourself.

So let me get real about this cycle. The increase in my weight correlates with a number of things, some I can control and some I can’t.

Firstly, I am now on a few age-related medications that have a known side effect of increasing weight if I am not really careful.

Secondly, I’ve gone through the same global stressors you have. This caused me to change my lifestyle somewhat. I now mainly teach my courses via Zoom. This means I don’t move as much as I used to when I work.

Thirdly, during this time my Mum’s mental health has declined and I now manage her finances. She is now living with my sister which has considerably reduced my anxiety about her day to day so has lessened this stressor for me (probably increased things for my sister).

I could go on but you get the idea. So I do have some real stressors in my life.

I am doing a few things to take care of myself such as playing with my dogs, getting out in nature and sometimes doing some yoga.

I can see that one thing I need to do is exercise more. I need to walk further rather than just letting my dogs exercise each other. I need to commit to doing my yoga daily. This might put too much pressure on me so for now I will commit to four times a week.

I do need to eat better and that includes seriously reducing my sugar intake. I don’t plan to do any strict diets because I feel that would be unhealthy. I am going to listen to my body more and make better choices.

As I read this back I notice how punishing my language is. I need to be kinder to myself.

Two things I have started doing that feel kinder and will make a big difference have a totally different feel to them. I have started singing again. I love to sing along to favourite tunes in the car. I’d stopped doing that but in the last week or so I have been playing a favourite CD as I drive about. It has lifted my mood. I found myself singing in the garden with the dogs yesterday. Yeah, this is worth doing.

The other thing is to get out with friends more. Joe and I have realised that since 2019 the amount of times we go out with friends has gone down a lot. We both want to socialise more and we committed to reaching out and doing fun things with friends more.

I’ve been sharing with you my stream of thought on this. If you do the same for yourself what are you noticing that you need to pay more attention to?

Where can you be kinder to yourself?

How do you need to nurture yourself better?

How can you have more fun?

I am going to share my ideas with you over the next few weeks. Please do share your thoughts with me including both your challenges and your successes.